This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

The new Donald Trump? Same as the old Donald Trump

His inability or unwillingness to change his behaviour appears to bode poorly for his chances.

Since clinching the presidential nomination, Donald Trump has continued to insult vanquished Republican foes, pick new fights with influential people, defend his most incendiary policy proposals, and has further offended women and Hispanics. (JONATHAN DRAKE / REUTERS File photo)

WASHINGTON—Just you wait, Donald Trump kept saying. Wait until I knock out the last of my Republican opponents, he declared, and you’ll see the “more presidential” side of me.

Nope.

Trump effectively clinched the party nomination one week ago. Since then, he has insulted his vanquished foes, picked new fights with influential people, defended his most incendiary policy proposals, and further offended women and Hispanics.

There is no pivot. The new Trump is the old Trump.

“It’s sort of like expecting a voracious tiger to turn into a lapdog overnight. Not only is it not going to happen overnight, it ain’t going to happen ever,” Democratic strategist Craig Varoga said in an interview.

Article Continued Below

“There’s nothing you can do. He’d have to have a brain transplant. This is who he is. He can’t help himself,” Mark Salter, a former top aide to Sen. John McCain, told Politico.

The businessman’s unpredictability is one reason Democrats have been wary of running against him despite his dreadful poll numbers. But his inability or unwillingness to change his behaviour appears to bode poorly for his chances of mending his reputation with the voter groups he has so alienated.

“It was his greatest strength in the primary, but it’s his greatest liability in the general election,” Varoga said. “When voters are actually making up their mind about electing a president, they don’t want somebody with an anger control disorder in charge of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.”

Trump touted himself in late-primary speeches as a “unifier.” But he has declined to play the gracious victor to defeated rivals, instead revelling in their humiliation. When Lindsey Graham said he would not support him in the general election, Trump fired off a statement declaring the senator “an embarrassment to the great people of South Carolina.”

Trump told the Wall Street Journal in April that he would soon become “more disciplined.” To be sure, Trump has recently shown occasional flashes of restraint. He followed his victory in the New York primary, for example, with a soft-spoken performance at a press conference.

And then he went back to making fun of people.

“He will find it difficult to do any kind of pivot,” said Karen Beckwith, chair of the political science department at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. “He lacks, as far as I can tell, any personal discipline. He doesn’t know when to be quiet, he doesn’t know when to be thoughtful. He doesn’t know how to shape his language.”

The beginning of his general election campaign has been marked by his trademark refusal to let any slight slide. In response to a critical New York Times article by evangelical leader Russell Moore, Trump took to Twitter to call Moore “a nasty guy with no heart.”

He has pounced on even tepid dissent. When Paul Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives, declared on CNN that he was not prepared to back Trump “at this time,” he appeared to be inviting Trump to try to persuade him.

Trump, though, issued a mocking statement. Within days, one of his surrogates, Sarah Palin, was promising to try to end Ryan’s career.

Of course, it is this kind of pugnacity that has endeared Trump to millions. He has sometimes expressed ambivalence about softening his sharp edges, saying supporters have asked him not to change.

“I believe that if he changes, he changes everything,” said Roy Sousley, a 61-year-old in Missouri. “I’m a firm believer in the way he conducts himself now. This is the way he should continue to conduct himself and the way he’s gained all this support: being real, true, tells it like it is.”

But the way he has conducted himself has also produced frightful favourability ratings among Hispanics, millennials, suburbanites, and, most importantly, women, more than two-thirds of whom now dislike him.

Trump’s sporadic declarations of “love” for female voters are unlikely to win them over. Shouting, he complained on Sunday that “the women get it better than we do, folks.” Over the past week, he has repeatedly accused Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton of playing “the women’s card” and being an “enabler” of her husband’s infidelity.

“That’s not going to mobilize anyone to his side,” Beckwith said. “That’s not going even to diminish the Democratic base among women.”

Trump has been no more flexible on policy than personality. Since Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out, Trump has reasserted his support for his ban on Muslims entering the country and his gigantic wall on the Mexican border.

In a Sunday appearance on ABC, he seemed to be abandoning his proposal for a massive tax cut for the rich, saying rates on high earners might go “up” after he finished negotiating with Congress. But he then said that the final rates would merely end up higher than the huge reduction he first suggested—and he bashed “the media” for a “false narrative.”

Trump did embark on one notable attempt at outreach. On Thursday, Cinco de Mayo, he tweeted a photo of himself eating a taco bowl.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com